California Drought

[lman]

Does anybody out there avoid meters by putting a well in, or is water too deep to drill a well. Around here everybody out of town has a well.

 

[ponytug]

Does anybody out there avoid meters by putting a well in, or is water too deep to drill a well. Around here everybody out of town has a well.

In most cities, you can't put in a well. In rural areas, yes people have wells, but many would like to have city water.

Why? Because then it is someone else's responsibility to make sure that there is enough. Lots of wells have gone dry, and water tables are much lower than they used to be.

A few years ago, California voted to manage underground water with a goal is sustainable water use. It is not yet fully enacted, but in principle the state is divided into water management districts that have to plan and regulate the water usage within their districts.

Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)

In 2014, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed three bills known collectively as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) . For the first time in its history, California had a framework for sustainable, groundwater management - “management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be...

water.ca.gov

As currently structured, it regulates larger users, and exempts household sized wells.

No definite plans yet about restoring aquifer levels, and managing contamination. Step one is stopping the depletion of the aquifers.

All the best,

Peter

 

[ultrarunner]

Does anybody out there avoid meters by putting a well in, or is water too deep to drill a well. Around here everybody out of town has a well.

A few have them in the city but annual backflow testing required and they were often put in many decades ago.

My brother spent 50k drilling two wells and came up dry.

Neighbor had a well drilled when I was a kid and I helped the son find it...

It pumps 4.5 minutes every 12 hours and less end of summer... he did set up a tank and a timer for 4 minutes twice a day and able to get some usable water...

Water here is about a penny a gallon not counting all the add on fees.

 

[MossRoad]

When we lived in town, we had city water. It was quite good. You had to pay both water and sewage charge on the same bill. To avoid confusing irrigation with sewage, they based your monthly sewage flow on the amount of water you used in January, February and March, when you were not likely to be irrigating. Pretty fair if you ask me.

Now that we live in the county, we have a well. We're lucky that it's pretty good here, too. Out on our rural property, it has a lot of iron.

 

[California]

Now that we live in the county, we have a well. We're lucky that it's pretty good here, too. Out on our rural property, it has a lot of iron.

After watching a Project Farm review, I bought a Zerowater dispenser. It works! The well water tests well within municipal water specs except just within the upper limit for acidity. The filter's element should be replaced when ppm of Total Dissolved Solids exceeds 35. (It comes with a ppm tester). I changed the element after a year even though the raw and filtered water continue to test 0 ppm - compared to just under 50 ppm for municipal at home in town. Recommended!

 

[California]

Summary by Dan Walters - by far the best journalist to cover the California legislature and courts, with emphasis on the broad issues affected by their decisions:

California's water wars see some breakthroughs but more clashes loom

There have been a few major breakthroughs in California's water wars recently. But other battles still remain unsettled.

calmatters.org

 

[NoTrespassing]

California reservoir "spectacular" release of billions of gallons of water

Water levels have risen significantly at the reservoir since the beginning of January.

www.newsweek.com

California Reservoir 'Spectacular' Release of Billions of Gallons of Water​

 

[lilranch2001]

That video doesn’t begin to do the release justice!

 

[California]

That's the spillway that failed 6 years ago and washed a lot of the hillside down, plugging the river below.

The article notes that this present release has dropped the reservoir level less than a foot. And it's interesting that the volume in the spillway is 1/3 of the total release, the other 2/3 is going through the powerhouse.

I'm 70 miles downstream from there and it's been raining extremely hard, with winds that might be making new records. I'm not aware of any crises here like we read about in southern California, however.

 

[lilranch2001]

That's the spillway that failed 6 years ago and washed a lot of the hillside down, plugging the river below.

The article notes that this present release has dropped the reservoir level less than a foot. And it's interesting that the volume in the spillway is 1/3 of the total release, the other 2/3 is going through the powerhouse.

I'm 70 miles downstream from there and it's been raining extremely hard, with winds that might be making new records. I'm not aware of any crises here like we read about in southern California, however.

Yea, I was thinking about that damage as I viewed the vid.

It would be amazing to be those guys at the top watching